By Candlelight A Child Is Put To Rest.

When power failures lead two down the hall one holding tight a tiny cherub fistsnuffing the fears of monsters with a kissthen with a puff of air the candle wisps into smoke and the ink well of darkness soon the weary child gently slips beneath grains of a Sandman'ssleepy grist to sail on pillows billows across dreams of innocence.

but as you leave one tiny drop of wax falls to the bed and in a moonlit beam hangs like a pearl tearon the quilted seams

it gives you pause for children without beds, or food and love who sleep on cardboard padsand nightly face the demonsthat your darlingsnever had.

I pause in my journey to the grave of my friend, to commemorate his birthday in a mid-December snowfall. The trees are skeletons beyond the gate coated in white.
It is as if the bones, buried far below, have...